And if some can
do this, all may do it under similar circumstances,--without depriving
themselves of any genuine pleasure, or any real enjoyment.
How intensely selfish is it for a person in the receipt of good pay to
spend everything upon himself,--or, if he has a family, to spend his
whole earnings from week to week, and lay nothing by. When we hear that
a man, who has been in the receipt of a good salary, has died and left
nothing behind him--that he has left his wife and family destitute--left
them to chance--to live or perish anywhere,--we cannot but regard it as
the most selfish thriftlessness. And yet, comparatively little is
thought of such cases. Perhaps the hat goes round. Subscriptions may
produce something--perhaps nothing; and the ruined remnants of the
unhappy family sink into poverty and destitution.
Yet the merest prudence would, to a great extent, have obviated this
result. The curtailment of any sensual and selfish enjoyment--of a glass
of beer or a screw of tobacco--would enable a man, in the course of
years, to save at least something for others, instead of wasting it on
himself. It is, in fact, the absolute duty of the poorest man to
provide, in however slight a degree, for the support of himself and his
family in the season of sickness and helplessness which often comes upon
men when they least expect such a visitation.
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